Struggle, Resilience, Solidarity: A Gaza-Filipino Cookbook
Through a collection of recipes, journalist Geela Garcia tells the story of a Palestinian refugee family’s survival in the Philippines and how they maintain a connection to their homeland through food.
“We were living every day as if it were our last.”
Aiman Abuhannieh, a Palestinian refugee in the Philippines, survived through bread lines before escaping Gaza in November 2023. The 34-year-old engineer recalled that just to eat, their family would line up for hours waiting for donations from large humanitarian agencies after their two houses were leveled to the ground. “We could not go to sleep, as events changed every minute,” says Aiman. “At night, everything was dark and we had to be alert.” Everything was back to scratch, and every day was a challenge just to secure the basics. There was a food and water shortage, and Aiman recalled people looking for bread. Palestinian and Jordanian author Mira Mattar in her Vittles essay “Stone and Seed” said that starvation is being used as a “tool of genocide in Gaza.” Israel’s armed forces control and limit the entry of food, water, fuel, and medicines to a population already dependent on humanitarian assistance even before the October 7 attack. However, this was not the Gaza that Josephine Abuhannieh, Aiman’s 64-year-old Filipino mother, chooses to remember and love. Born and raised in the Philippines, Josephine later moved to Palestine after marrying Aiman’s father. Having always had an affinity for cooking, she appreciated living a relatively comfortable life in the fertile crescent, despite being exposed to conflict. “Before this major crisis, we could eat whatever we wanted,” she fondly recalls. “We don’t just buy apples in pieces; they are sold in boxes and we eat everything, or slice and serve them to our visitors. We would always have dinners with fellow Filipinos in Gaza.That’s because we were living in the fertile crescent, where Jesus and all the prophets were born.” Josephine, being religious, would always attribute the abundance of food to living in a sacred place. A former chef, Josephine worked in the kitchen most of her life and recalled not having problems accessing fruits and seeds in Gaza, at least before the October 7 attack. But the situation in Gaza with her fellow Filipino refugees is different now. Aiman recalls that while they were waiting to be repatriated to the Philippines, they had to fight for a sack of flour just to survive. “If you don’t fight for it, you will have nothing to eat,” says Aiman. As reported in The Guardian, an estimated 50% of tree crops in Gaza have been destroyed. Experts are concerned that continuous bombardment may contaminate the soil, groundwater, and coastal areas. The lasting impacts of the war on the environment will make it difficult for biodiversity to flourish, leaving Gaza almost uninhabitable. And yet even then, Mattar notes that essential aid like stone fruit is being refused entry in fear of it being used as seeds to plant trees, in fear of it bringing back “beingness” to Palestine. In her essay, Mattar also emphasizes that these inhumane acts of starvation didn’t begin from the October 7 attack. Established in 1901, the Zionist organization Jewish National Fund systemized settler-colonialism through eco-apartheid, creating the myth that “Israel made the desert bloom.” By planting pine trees, which replaced native crops such as almonds and olives essential to Palestinian food culture and cuisine, the desert, at the expense of its biodiversity, was made to resemble Europe, to make it familiar to its Jewish settlers. While starvation and ecocide are being used to eliminate Palestinian life in Gaza, in the Philippines, Palestinian refugees have turned to cooking as their means of survival. Filipinos show their solidarity by buying their meals, recognizing that the struggle for Palestine’s liberation from US-backed Israel is intertwined with the Filipinos’ fight for sovereignty against US and China imperialism. In the guise of counter-terrorism, the Philippines imports arms and ammunition from Israel; the Philippine National Police asked the Israeli police to provide training to local police officers. If in Palestine, the US backs Israel through arms trade, in the Philippine countryside, US imperialism displaces farmers and indigenous peoples from their homes for pseudo-development projects. Agriculture and early civilization emerged on the fertile crescent, where Palestine stands. Yet 1 out of 6 children in Gaza is acutely malnourished. Meanwhile, 51 million Filipinos suffer from moderate or severe “food insecurity’’ in the Philippines, an agricultural and coastal country. The struggle for nourishment in Palestine and the Philippines is ironic, coming from countries with abundant biodiversity. In this same struggle, we forge solidarity. In Josephine’s place in Cavite, where they’re rebuilding their lives in the Philippines through food, they opened the restaurant “Al Bayt” which means “Home” in Arabic. They offer Arabic dishes such as shawarmas, kebabs, and biryanis cooked to fit Filipino tastes. Working on food sheltered them. But from time to time, in between chopping onions and putting in spices, Josephine would stop to tell stories of their home in Gaza. She has lost hope that they could back home to Palestine. This project hopes to counter this violence through sustenance, in celebration of Palestinian food and culture. These nine recipes are of common food they served in Gaza, adapted in the way Josephine makes them with the available ingredients in the local Philippine market. At the heart of this project is its honesty. This work was made from the good and challenging days encountered when displaced people rebuild a sense of place, and remember home through food, in the most accessible way. “Fruits were just so easy to find in Gaza. We just throw in seeds in our backyard and they grow with little effort,” Josephine recalls fondly. If Josephine’s family had to survive on bread lines in Palestine, now in the Philippines, they survive by cooking food that connects them back to their home. While Josephine and Aiman’s family—and countless other Palestinian refugees—can’t plant and bloom on their soils yet, we nourish these seeds of beingness. Get Your Copy of the Zine This project collects nine recipes of Palestinian cuisine by Josephine Abuhannieh in an effort to raise awareness for the refugees in the Philippines. It is realised in conjuction with Everything’s Fine and will hit the stores very soon. Download a PDF preview of the zine below.
Author: Geela Garcia
Geela Garcia is a Filipino photographer and multimedia journalist based in Manila, Philippines. Her photographic work, which documents stories of women, food sovereignty, and the environment, aims to write history from the experience of its makers.